Summer Vegetable Dinner

Since retiring from the restaurant, I have cooked a handful of real meals, meals into which I put any effort at all. After coming home from the winery, I am mainly about getting something on the table rather than being creative. I need a reason to cook now, it seems. And that reason would be our good friends Pat and Mary Jo just two houses down.

We invited them over for dinner and since they are vegetarians, I cooked vegetarian. Because my diet is mainly vegetarian, this is a non-issue and truth be told, I've never needed meat to make my life complete. Well, there is pork belly. If I have any weakness at all, it would be for pork belly.

This meal was guided by the time of the year and what was in season, the very same ethos that drove the menus at OBW. For a first course, seeing some beautiful Kuta squash in the market made me think back to a dish I did for a vegetarian summer squash-themed dinner more than a decade ago. I made a classic vichyssoise substituting squash for potatoes and calling it rather tongue-in-cheek squashyssoise.

Only one problem. I have real problems with lactose and a bowl of the original chilled soup would certainly be painful. No worries: coconut milk to the rescue for that same unctuousness that heavy cream provides. The soup involved sweating squash and leek with a bouquet of Thai basil from the garden (because is not the combination of coconut milk and Thai basil one of the most glorious flavor combinations ever?) and then into the blender.

After the soup chilled overnight, I pulled it out of the fridge 90 minutes before I wanted to serve it to let it warm to the point where the fat in the coconut milk would be liquid, cooler than room temperature. Only one problem: the soup was so desperately flat that I thought of pitching it out rather than serving it.

I don't know if I am out of practice or if my chef mind failed me, but it actually took me what seemed like several minutes to figure out how to rescue the soup. A sprinkle of salt and a squeeze of agave syrup took the soup to a new plane: one of the three best soups I have ever made and I have made thousands. The garnish is a simple relish of raw corn, raw tomato, Thai basil, salt, and agave nectar.

Lacto-Friendly Squashyssoise

Squash cakes. A year ago, I would have screamed "f*cking squash cakes!" at the thought of making another after a decade and a half of having them on summer menus and the incessant requests from customers as soon as spring arrived, "When are you going to put squash cakes back on the menu?" Squash cakes sound pretty bland, boring, and healthy, but these are none of those things and once someone tries them, she is pretty well hooked for life.

A quick fresh salad of black-eyed peas and vegetables dressed in red wine vinegar and olive oil sits under the cake and a quick pickle of cucumber brings a little more acid to the party to complement the incredibly rich squash.

Squash Cake, Black-Eyed Pea Salad, Quick Pickled Cukes

And for dessert, I had to do a sorbet. Why? My wife made me schlep my huge commercial sorbet machine 3500 miles across this country and it had been sitting in the garage, unpacked and unloved. I made a simple syrup of Pinot Noir with a hint of cinnamon and blended it with watermelon to yield a fun summer sorbet.

Watermelon-Pinot Noir Sorbet

Pat and Mary Jo, thanks for all you do for us. We'll do it again. When I get the itch to cook again.